By Jessica Lockhart

Varone and Dancers made skillful use of some of the most luxurious movement vocabulary available in contemporary dance.

Doug Varone and Dancers at the ICA, Boston, November 16

A scene from Doug Varone and Dancers’s LUX. Photo: Erin Baiano

Doug Varone and Dancers is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Since 1995, the troupe has staged performances in concert settings and for dance, opera, theater, film, and fashion shows. Varone’s philosophy is direct and expansive: “Dance is more than movement — it’s a way to connect, to inspire, and to open hearts.” In this Boston concert, the 10 dancers made those emotional linkages and then some by expertly conveying Varone’s elegant and powerful choreography.

The performance featured three dances from different eras.

LUX premiered in 2006. It draws on eight dancers who continuously enter and exit the dance space with impressive force and beauty. They never stop moving, just keep changing partners and directions. The movement flowed and swooped to a lush musical score by Philip Glass, the music egging on the dancers, daring them to match its propulsion. As their bodies swirled, the dancers’ shirts and pants — cut into pleats — flowed open. This created an enchanting visual aspect to their movements; they seemed to be sailing, softly, in the air as each partnered with another performer. Wonderfully, the dancers twisted and turned in distinctive ways — these were individuals, not a collective — and didn’t copy each other’s movements, which was refreshing. The experience was breathtakingly beautiful. This was an inspiring spectacle.

HOME was next — it was first performed in 1988. Varone stood staring out into space with a serious sense of dejection on his face as Adriane Fang sat in a chair looking down at the floor. Varone is still performing a role he created 38 years ago. It makes a very different dramatic impression when it is an older person in a relationship, rather than a 20-year-old. Dick Connette’s compelling music features violin and cello.

Neither dancer moved for a long time. Then Varone walked and sat down and then Fang tried to stand, but he forced her to sit. The couple kept up this start-and-stop behavior — the two walk away from each other and then touch each other. They were struggling to part — but they just wouldn’t leave each other. This was a picture of a very unhappy relationship, where despair had pretty well overcome love. Can this dance be about what happens when we lose our “open hearts?”

The third dance, RESTORE, brought back the full cast of dancers, who moved energetically about the stage until it became clear that some sort of force (perhaps with evil intentions?) was compelling them to become inert, to halt. The joyous dancers slowly became sad, weighted down with a heaviness that they tried to resist. They joined forces, dancing as teams who were not ready to give in. This dance was created in 2024, and no doubt reflects a world that is becoming crazy and crazier. So it’s hard to figure out for sure what was being restored. But they continued to dance, spilling themselves quickly down to the floor and then rolling back up again. Then they would fly through the air with gigantic leaps and turns. Varone and dancers made skillful use of some of the most luxurious movement vocabulary available in contemporary dance — this is movement that is pleasing to the eye and satisfying for the soul. Even while being pressed toward the floor, they helped each other and would not give up. This piece was certainly the epitome of dramatizing “ways to connect.”

Here’s my poem acknowledging the group’s 40th anniversary.

“Doug Varone and Dancers”

Arms that snap to a pinpoint stop
Falling to the floor with speed and grace
Eating up the space as they bound across the stage
A sudden look to the side
Who are you?
Let’s leap, turn, and walk together
Resignation beyond despair
Love that hurts so much
We are one but not in unison
A swirl of delicious bodies in motion

40 years in the business of performing contemporary dance. Keep going, Varone; we need your beauty and resilience in these dark times. The program was presented by Global Arts.

Jessica Lockhart is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Dance Criticism and has a BA in Communication from the University of Southern Maine. Lockhart is a Maine Association of Broadcasters award-winning independent journalist. Currently, she also works as program director at WMPG Community Radio.